A Gamble on Pedigreed Grapes and Fancy Labels

By BILL RYAN

Published: July 16, 1995

TWENTY years ago a Connecticut industrialist became involved in a venture new to the state but so old that ancient Greece and Rome each had a god for it -- Dionysus and Bacchus, respectively.

The industrialist was Sherman P. Haight Jr., who was in the textile business. The new venture was making wine.

Evereyone knew that making wine, on a commercial basis anyway, was not something for Connecticut. The climate in winter was too harsh for vines that produce better grapes. Making wine in the state was confined to first generation Italian immigrants who made some for family consumption from the hardy backyard vines they nurtured with skills passed on generation to generation. But wine in bottles with fancy labels, made from pedigreed grapes, competing in a very crowded market -- that was not for Connecticut.

"We took a big chance," said Mr. Haight recently as he wandered about his Tudor-style winery and his 30-acre vineyard in the northwest hills of the state only a few miles from his native Litchfield. The "we" was himself and another Connecticut industrialist, August Loos of Pomfret, who had also decided to go into the wine business in 1975 but would later get out of it because of his many other business interests.

If Mr. Haight is considered the pioneer of the Connecticut wine business today, the person who should be credited with being the inspiration, he says, was a Russian immigrant to America, Frank Konstantin.

Dr. Konstantin, an earth scientist who has since died, was working at the Cornell University Research Center in New York State in the 1970's. He was an outspoken critic of wine production in this country, Mr. Haight said, and believed, judging from his experience in the cold climates of Russia, that vineyards could be sustained in a climate like Connecticut's if certain precautions were taken. These included bringing vines to the winter season in peak condition and making sure each plant had three or four trunks, in contrast to the single trunk used in more hospitable wine regions like the Napa or Sonoma valleys of California.

Acting on Dr. Konstantin's theories, and a lot of faith, Mr. Haight planted his first vines, Chardonnay and Riesling, to make white wine when the grapes matured in three years.

If the grapes had matured earlier, selling the wine would have been illegal. Connecticut had no law authorizing production, so Mr. Haight and Mr. Loos started to lobby state legislators for a bill to authorize farm wineries. "We had to convince them that this was good for agriculture and good for the state," Mr. Haight said.

They succeeded. The Farm Winery Act in 1978 made the business legal, just in time for Mr. Haight's first grape harvest that autumn. He was ready with the first established winery in the state.

The first harvest was only fair in quantity but excellent in quality, Mr. Haight said, a condition that still applies. "It's hard to grow fine grapes this close to the boundary line where grapes will grow at all," he said. "And we might get two and a half tons of grapes per acre here while in a place like the Napa Valley four tons per acre is routine. But the compensation is the higher quality."

Buoyed by the early success, he gave up his textile business, now managed by one of his daughters in Georgia, and entered into the wine business with an enthusiasm that seems to have only increased with the years. "I'm absolutely fascinated with this business," Mr. Haight said. "It's part agriculture, part marketing, almost like a factory, and highly complex." Now in his early 70's, he says he is just getting started.

"I learn something new every day. I'll never retire," he said. "It will take me 25 more years to accomplish what I want to do here."

Today, the Haight operation produces three white wines, three red wines and a blush wine. And it has competition. Wine making is now an established business in Connecticut, a scattered bunch of economic bright spots in an area particularly hard hit by the recession of recent years.

Connecticut even has its own wine trail, marked by highway signs so visitors can stop for tastings. They include Haight in Litchfield and Olde Mystick Village in Mystic where its wine education center is situated, Hopkins in Warren, DiGrazia in Brookfield, Chamard in Clinton and Stonington in Stonington. Other vineyards in the state but not on the wine trail include Bishop in Cheshire, Heritage in Lisbon, McLaughlin in the Sandy Hook section of Newtown and Raynham in East Haven.

They are a cooperative lot, Mr. Haight said. "We're all friends," he explained. "We help each other out. We even help out people making wine at home"

Connecticut is riding the crest of an acceptance of wine today, he said, in preference to harder alcoholic beverages, partially due to medical reports that in moderation wine can be beneficial to health.

But with the new accent on wine has come a boom in production, not only in the United States and in Italy and France, traditionally famed for their wines, but also in countries never heard from before. Today, wines from Chile and Australia, among others, are marketed aggressively in the American market.

Selling Connecticut wines, with no heritage, is difficult in such a vast market. Even getting people to taste the wine is a challenge, Mr. Haight admits. But he sees progress.

"Acceptance of wines here has come a long way in the last few years," he said. "Once people would agree to taste our wines with the attitude 'I'll try anything and expect nothing.' But not any more. Now they say the wines are better than expected. We make good wines but we face the same problem that California once had. People wouldn't even try their wines once."

And today, he said, even the wines of France, long considered in a class by themselves, are being threatened by competition. "Some vineyards in France are living on their reputations and pricing themselves out of the market," Mr. Haight said. "I have a friend who has a great wine cellar and I like to go see him because he always breaks out a bottle of a great French wine. But now he says, 'Enjoy the French wines while you can because I'm not buying them anymore.' "

The dean of Connecticut's winery owners also sees signs that some of the pretension and jargon about wine is fading and he is happy about that. The criterion for wine, he believes, is not someone blathering on in stilted cliches but simply whether a person likes it or not.

"Wine is like food," Mr. Haight said. "Some people like string beans and some people can't stand string beans. In any kind of wine, you like it or you don't."

Making wine today, in a high-tech age, is still half science and half art, he said. His winemaker at Haight Vineyards, Wayne Stitzer, agrees with him.

Like all commercial winemakers today, Mr. Stitzer is skilled in the science of times and temperatures and stainless steel vats and various kinds of oak barrels. But, having he had one credential not taught in books or learned at other wineries. He had a grandfather who made wine. In Connecticut.

The grandfather's name was Salvatore Daddona, originally from Italy, and for years he had produced wine for the Daddona clan in the Oakville section of Watertown. Several years ago, Mr. Stitzer invited him to see the wine making at Haight.

"We toured the whole operation, the vineyards, the winery, and he was very quiet, but then we came to the laboratory and Grandfather just started to laugh and laugh," Mr. Stitzer said. "A laboratory! For making wine? He thought that was really funny."

Photos: Wendy Shreders, manager of the vineyards, tends her stock on the 30 acres of Haight Vineyards near Litchfield. (Pg. 1); Sherman P. Haight Jr. pioneered Connecticut wine making, which he says is "almost like a factory, and highly complex." (Pg. 6) (Carl David LaBianca for The New York Times)